Tech you miss/ new tech trends you hate - ok boomers

[Ginger Piglet]

If that's not scary enough, the local news some years back had a story where the automotive news guy went to a test track where someone showed him how easy it was to hack into a vehicle's computer system with a laptop and the right hacking tools/software. To prove they got in, they activated the vehicle's brakes without the driver stepping down on the pedal. The idea that everything should have internet connectivity should also be tempered by the idea that insecure devices are a way for hackers to cause havoc, steal one's identity, etc. Sadly, nobody cares about privvacy concerns until after a data breach. At that point, the horse has already left the barn and it's too late for those already victimized.

Oh joy. So your expensive Tesla Model S can be immobilised by order of the state by way of a backdoor (which will also be used no doubt by criminals to invent the cyber carjacking).

Stop the planet, I want off.

 

[ForgottenUserName]

Oh joy. So your expensive Tesla Model S can be immobilised by order of the state by way of a backdoor (which will also be used no doubt by criminals to invent the cyber carjacking).

Stop the planet, I want off.

Why do you think EVs are being pushed so hard? They can shut off everyone's cars during the next plandemic and force you to stay home.

 

[nigger of the north]

iPod classic. Fuck, just something without a touch screen that has no internet capability to distract me with.

Up until last year I used a cheap, super basic mp3/video player that I bought off Amazon like 10 years ago. Can't remember the brand off the top of my head, but it was some small independent company that appeared to be a one man show sort of deal.

Anyway, this thing was the size of a pack of a gum, was indestructible, and had such a simple interface that I had zero complaints about it whatsoever. Literally cost me something like 20 USD. I later bought one for my then girlfriend like 3 years later, and was similarly pleased with the updated product.

Thread tax: I fucking hate how modern phones have so much fucking bloat on them. I bought an older Samsung last year with 32gb storage on it. Despite routinely emptying out my phone of media, most of the space is taken up by app bloat and other meaningless bullshit. Even when disabling and clearing the data of unused apps, they continue to use space and size. Infuriating.

Edit: this is the one, AGPTEK. They've climbed in price a little and got a little fancier, but you can still grab them from eBay for less than 25 USB.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

It was one thing when demand for IT pros exceeded the number of graduates looking to work in the field.

Only there really hasn't been a lack of IT Pros, it has been a lack of companies 1) wanting to train Americans (We need 5 years professional experience, an advanced degree) and 2) Not wanting to pay American wages (5+ Years experience, advanced degree, entry level or less pay).
Why hire an American who expect to be able to pay off thier student loans, have a family, and a life, when you can hire pajeet who is willing to do the needful for less then peanuts and live with 5+ others in a 1 bedroom apartment.

 

[Toolbox]

Oh joy. So your expensive Tesla Model S can be immobilised by order of the state by way of a backdoor (which will also be used no doubt by criminals to invent the cyber carjacking).

Stop the planet, I want off.

Hopefully eventually just converting existing vehicles to electric can be cheaper than teslas are so most just go that route, and they can't be 'updated' without you wanting them to and they don't have an internet connection.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

Why do you think EVs are being pushed so hard? They can shut off everyone's cars during the next plandemic and force you to stay home.

Remote shutoff on vehicles, sadly, isn't a new phenomenon.

I'm not sure how many years ago it was, but a locally well-known icon had retired from one career to be a new car salesman and later a used car salesman. During the latter, period, it came to light that anyone buying his used cars under subprime lending conditions had a remote shutoff switch put on their cars while they were paying off their loan so that the cars could be disabled if the buyer defaulted on payments.

As a result, the dealer faced lawsuits from people who either: (1) had their cars shut down at inopportune times (such as in the middle of driving on a busy highway), or (2) made their payments timely only to have the dealership shut their car off because their database incorrectly listed the payment(s) as delinquent. The hit to his reputation was such that his dealership closed and he seems to have faded into obscurity.

TL;DR - The ability to remotely disable cars already exists and, yes, it's the shit heap you might expect it to be in terms of how its executed.

Hopefully eventually just converting existing vehicles to electric can be cheaper than teslas are so most just go that route

With automakers doing what they can to make DIY repairs difficult if not outright impossible for knowledgeable normies, I can see them doing whatever it takes to prevent people from easily converting their existing vehicles to electric. With the trend that corporations see people as little more than consumers and dollar signs, automakers won't want to see people do anything that deprives them of a revenue stream.

 

[Toolbox]

Remote shutoff on vehicles, sadly, isn't a new phenomenon.

I'm not sure how many years ago it was, but a locally well-known icon had retired from one career to be a new car salesman and later a used car salesman. During the latter, period, it came to light that anyone buying his used cars under subprime lending conditions had a remote shutoff switch put on their cars while they were paying off their loan so that the cars could be disabled if the buyer defaulted on payments.

As a result, the dealer faced lawsuits from people who either: (1) had their cars shut down at inopportune times (such as in the middle of driving on a busy highway), or (2) made their payments timely only to have the dealership shut their car off because their database incorrectly listed the payment(s) as delinquent. The hit to his reputation was such that his dealership closed and he seems to have faded into obscurity.

TL;DR - The ability to remotely disable cars already exists and, yes, it's the shit heap you might expect it to be in terms of how its executed.


With automakers doing what they can to make DIY repairs difficult if not outright impossible for knowledgeable normies, I can see them doing whatever it takes to prevent people from easily converting their existing vehicles to electric. With the trend that corporations see people as little more than consumers and dollar signs, automakers won't want to see people do anything that deprives them of a revenue stream.

All we can hope for now is for some billionare to pull off funding a modular car company. Getting anything past safety regs will be a bitch though.

 

[HymanHive]

Oh joy. So your expensive Tesla Model S can be immobilised by order of the state by way of a backdoor (which will also be used no doubt by criminals to invent the cyber carjacking).

Stop the planet, I want off.

Or worse, some hacker turns your car in to a car-of-peace and forces you to ram in to a crowd of people.

"Honestly Judge, my car was hacked!"

With automakers doing what they can to make DIY repairs difficult if not outright impossible for knowledgeable normies, I can see them doing whatever it takes to prevent people from easily converting their existing vehicles to electric. With the trend that corporations see people as little more than consumers and dollar signs, automakers won't want to see people do anything that deprives them of a revenue stream.

This is why i prefer cars prep 2008. The quality is still there before the recession hit, and they're a piece of piss to diagnose and fix. Turbo diesels are the easier to repair, last the longest and are the best to modify (most gains to be had).

 

[3119967d0c]

If there's any single thing that should be nuked from orbit, it's the "Internet of Things," or as I prefer to call it, the "Internet of Dumb Shit."

you can already buy alarm sensors that individually connect to your wifi

What an amazing concept. Having all your individual door and window sensors and motion detectors talk to the internet on their own.

it came to light that anyone buying his used cars under subprime lending conditions had a remote shutoff switch put on their cars while they were paying off their loan so that the cars could be disabled if the buyer defaulted on payments.

As a result, the dealer faced lawsuits from people who either: (1) had their cars shut down at inopportune times (such as in the middle of driving on a busy highway), or (2) made their payments timely only to have the dealership shut their car off because their database incorrectly listed the payment(s) as delinquent. The hit to his reputation was such that his dealership closed and he seems to have faded into obscurity.

TL;DR - The ability to remotely disable cars already exists and, yes, it's the shit heap you might expect it to be in terms of how its executed.

I mean, having this applied to all new vehicles is a little different from shady used car dealers sticking it in to make it easier for the repo man to get back a Chevy Impala from the same guy for the third time.

 

[Pissmaster]

So many PC gamers nowadays are obsessed with having old games run in modern resolutions, and I don't understand why. Most of the time, the games are clearly not meant to be played at modern resolutions because something inevitably breaks, be it the HUD that gets stretched out or cutscenes that show things that aren't supposed to be there. The first two Fallouts are a good example; there's a widescreen mod for them but it zooms the game so far out and it makes the dialogue boxes not even fill out the screen like they're supposed to. The GOG release System Shock 2 gives you the option of playing in modern resolutions, but they make all the text and menus tiny, which is especially annoying for a game with a lot of menus and reading.

I just don't get what's so hard about playing games in 4:3 resolutions. I could understand it if it's one of those cases where the game plays in a tiny window and you have to mess with the resolution to get it working, but most of the time it's sperging about how to get some game that was made 30 years ago playing in ultra-widescreen.

Yeah, so I've noticed. Some people just really sperg out at having black columns on either side of their screen, when even in 4:3 mode, you still have a bigger viewport than you would on an older screen.

Spoiler: If you don't want to notice something every time you watch Seinfeld, don't read this

There's a lot more to 4:3 formatting than most people realize. Try watching an older show shot for 4:3 screens, but with 16:9 versions on streaming services where it was rescanned from the original film. Seinfeld's like that. Just about every scene is shot at angles to get everyone in frame, and they occasionally get uncomfortably close, which stands out now that you can see the rest of the room that was cut off in 4:3.

The only older games that I'd wanna play at my monitor's aspect ratio are first person shooters, since the extra viewport space makes the game a better experience.

You need 5G for the Internet of things, smart cities and self driving cars. It can also more accurately triangulate you. The amount of data that will be moving around, and the latency will be crucial considering self driving cars etc. will constantly talk to not only each other but the street etc as well.

That's a good enough reason as any to not condemn the anti-5G crowd. Honestly, the fears over the frequencies poisoning you or whatever the fuck seemed to have been planted as a way to head off any dissent by people who hate Internet of Things and just want to stand up to the telecoms. Just lump anyone with a good reason to object in with all the crazies, and boom, everything they say is instantly discredited. Just like so many awful things nowadays.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Or worse, some hacker turns your car in to a car-of-peace and forces you to ram in to a crowd of people.

"Honestly Judge, my car was hacked!"

That defense was tested in 2003 by an Iranian that ran down 18 people and killed 2. "By the prophets beard I swear my car was remotely controlled and I could do nothing!" - he was swerving across the promenade to be able to hit more people until the car got halal'd by a concrete traffic barrier.

The first step in directly remote controlling cars will probably be sold as an emergency override so all vehicles on the road will safely give way for emergency vehicles if something very terrible happens, like a school shooting or some other emotional crowbar. (Maybe further down the road the system will lock the doors to keep everyone in place so they don't risk their own safety or interfere with whatever is going on, that would make sense, right?)

After that I would imagine that they would like to control your vehicle sometimes, like during rush hour for traffic shaping purposes, that doesn't sound so unreasonable, right? It shortens the time for those commuting, it helps prevent gridlocks and the environment etc. But you're free to drive as you see fit outside of those hours. Letting the system drive your car is the responsible thing to do

One positive(imagine a BuzzFeed video hyping this future) would be that the system knows, plans and controls the flow of traffic for that day so you don't even have to think about when you have to leave for work or what route to take, when Momlexa tells you to take the ipad and go sit in the car you do it without thinking.

 

[AnOminous]

The first step in directly remote controlling cars will probably be sold as an emergency override so all vehicles on the road will safely give way for emergency vehicles if something very terrible happens, like a school shooting or some other emotional crowbar.

This would only be meaningful if you outlawed owning cars that don't have it.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

This would only be meaningful if you outlawed owning cars that don't have it.

Yes. Hopefully no one is pushing to get rid of old cars and replace them with modern EVs over a 15-20 year period while designating more and more lanes or other benefits for electric vehicles.

Will this happen? idk, I'm just speculating on how they could make it start to happen in larger cities and get people to happily accept it.

 

[Toolbox]

Yes. Hopefully no one is pushing to get rid of old cars and replace them with modern EVs over a 15-20 year period while designating more and more lanes or other benefits for electric vehicles.

Will this happen? idk, I'm just speculating on how they could make it start to happen in larger cities and get people to happily accept it.

I think they'd be more likely to mandate that you get some sort of smart control chip in your car regardless of it's age. It's pretty much possible to install power steering and other modern car equipment in any past vehicle (unless we're talking about as old as the first Benz). This kid who was one of the first people to jailbreak the Iphone started a company a few years ago that's developing an independent self driving system that just relies on a smartphone that's processing commands locally. Someone figured out how to shoehorn this into a 60s or 50s van by installing power steering and control boards. If random amateurs can do it government funding can.

 

[AnOminous]

If random amateurs can do it government funding can.

The government is utterly fucking retarded, though. Do you even have a grasp of how fucking incompetent the government is?

 

[Toolbox]

The government is utterly fucking retarded, though. Do you even have a grasp of how fucking incompetent the government is?

Government funding of big tech to do the job for them. I'm well aware that the dinosaurs within beauraracy couldn't pull it off.

 

[Blamo]

Oh joy. So your expensive Tesla Model S can be immobilised by order of the state by way of a backdoor (which will also be used no doubt by criminals to invent the cyber carjacking).

Stop the planet, I want off.

Wait until your self diving car (which is totally unnecessary tbh) won't drive you to certain places. Oh, and it makes you wonder when will they ban human driven vehicles outside of some expensive licensing, so the rich can enjoy their Ferraries.

The merging of proposed technologies and current trends could paint a horrible picture.

Great Reset future where you rent cars to move around? Nope, you tweeted something bad so the self driving car company don't have to do a business with you. etc.

That's a good enough reason as any to not condemn the anti-5G crowd. Honestly, the fears over the frequencies poisoning you or whatever the fuck seemed to have been planted as a way to head off any dissent by people who hate Internet of Things and just want to stand up to the telecoms. Just lump anyone with a good reason to object in with all the crazies, and boom, everything they say is instantly discredited. Just like so many awful things nowadays.

I wouldn't be surprised. The whole thing came out of nowhere, and had no precedent in even the crazy conspiracy field.

They only had concerns about radiowave spam being unhealthy in the long run, not it causing Covid. Also celebs too just started pushing this out of nowhere. And that is always suspicious to me.

So both anti internet of things and What if radio waves are unhealthy crowd gets equated with weirdos. I think that's a flaw/tactic of conspiracy crowds. The very outlandish stuff gets promoted over the sensible ones. I still can't believe it for example, that the Flat Earth stuff is not some NGO's creation to monitor how alternative media works and how information spreads. While having a subject spread that has no bearing on people's irl lives, in fact it's so absurd most people just ignore it and don't check deeper to see if it glows.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

It sucks when an image file is replaced with a WEBP file, even when the URL says it isn't. After the pic is downloaded, it's unusable because it's a stupid WEBP. Older browsers may not be impacted though.

 

[fat old sun]

Yes. Hopefully no one is pushing to get rid of old cars and replace them with modern EVs over a 15-20 year period while designating more and more lanes or other benefits for electric vehicles.

Will this happen? idk, I'm just speculating on how they could make it start to happen in larger cities and get people to happily accept it.

Did everyone forget cash for clunkers? This is how you do it.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

It sucks when an image file is replaced with a WEBP file, even when the URL says it isn't. After the pic is downloaded, it's unusable because it's a stupid WEBP. Older browsers may not be impacted though.

IrfanView can convert single images or batch-convert based on filetype, it's super easy. You're on an old mac or something right? Fire up a Windows VM and convert all those files to gods chosen format: ECW

I wouldn't be surprised. The whole thing came out of nowhere, and had no precedent in even the crazy conspiracy field.

They only had concerns about radiowave spam being unhealthy in the long run, not it causing Covid. Also celebs too just started pushing this out of nowhere. And that is always suspicious to me.

So both anti internet of things and What if radio waves are unhealthy crowd gets equated with weirdos. I think that's a flaw/tactic of conspiracy crowds. The very outlandish stuff gets promoted over the sensible ones. I still can't believe it for example, that the Flat Earth stuff is not some NGO's creation to monitor how alternative media works and how information spreads. While having a subject spread that has no bearing on people's irl lives, in fact it's so absurd most people just ignore it and don't check deeper to see if it glows.

Those weirdos have been around for a long time, they were incredibly shrill back when 3G was about to be rolled out. They were around before that as well and back then they were hysterical about electromagnetic fields in general, meaning they were afraid of cables and electrical appliances. Some claimed to be allergic to electromagnetic fields so they had to live in the woods like Uncle Ted.

Oddly enough I can't remember them freaking out about 4G, maybe I just missed that one.